MarsG76

1 minute ago, Sunshine said:

I totally understand, if you knew how much time I spent at the eyepiece glaring at Betelgeuse waiting for it to blow, you would say I’m just as gullible haha.

Gullible is bliss....unless it actually happens and the flash is so brights that the light comes out of the back of your head.... 😉

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

First off, your images are amazing, such detail.

I don't think it is possible for any planet which is largely geologically inactive to suddenly become more active. Geological activity such as volcanoes, shifting of crust etc are driven by heat within a planets core or, gravitational forces acting on the body therefore creating friction and heat. In the case of mars it does not suffer such gravitational forces enough to cause enough friction.  If it were geologically active enough to cause active volcanoes in present time it would have to be due to internal heat and upheaval which so far hasn't been enough to cause such violent phenomenon as volcanoes. Mars has cooled to a point where it has passed that phase in it geologic history, any recurrence of such events would have to involve a reintroduction of heat which (i am not a geologist) but, i cant see how that could possible happen. To clarify, i don't mean Mars may not have enough stored heat for a volcanic eruption, what i mean to say is if Mars were inactive, it cannot suddenly reawaken.

if i am incorrect  feel free to weigh in and school me., anybody out there. 

AAAAAWWWW dont try and kill my hopes 😉

I'm not talking about re activating or adding heat.. I'm saying that science has no clue about what really inside a planet, they're only educated guesses which a constantly updated... even on earth, the deepest man has drilled into the crust is about 13km... below that it's all seismic echo interpretations... and when they basically say that between the crust and core "it's mostly the same stuff" than i'm skeptical.... and hopeful to see Olympus mons explode in my eyepiece during my life time.... call me gullible, meh.. than I'm gullible...

19 hours ago, Drifter said:

Yes, ... I agree with you .... astronomer scientists are finding certain Martian clouds hard to explain it seems. 
This from Nature Feb 2015 ... from an observation from @  2012.

https://www.nature.com/news/martian-mystery-cloud-defies-explanation-1.16924
 

This elongated trail, which I read was explained away as formed by temperature differential of rising air over the peak of the ‘extinct’ volcano creating a vapour trail cloud. Hmmm ... wouldn’t we have been seeing these all the time ? ... instead of once in a blue moon? Unusual it sustained so long over such a long distance - as you mentioned.
Something clearly doesn’t fit in the Theory about the nature/composition of the Martian atmosphere, rate of sublimation if these clouds are formed by water vapour or floating ice crystals as some have proposed.

(snow clouds?! - on Mars ... surely not?🤔)

This article from New Scientist talks about frozen carbon dioxide and solar bursts/burps(?) as a long shot explanation for general ‘clouds’ seen:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086907-unexplained-plume-over-mars-could-be-caused-by-solar-outburst/

- but most can’t see a solar burst triggering a narrow trail like this. 

The "long shot explanation", "unexplained" and strange shapes and bahaviour all give me the hope for something great and rare about to explode.

1 hour ago, Drifter said:

Remember this vapour plume on Mars?

No eruption that time either unfortunately. There is seismic activity ... so possibly one day Mars might reawaken??😄🤔

 

Vapor plume??? that is a extremely long for a vapor plume...

Can you imagine Olympus Mons erupting... while capturing a time lapse animation.

Awesome detail 

1 minute ago, tooth_dr said:

Very good images Mariusz. From the C8?

Thanks.... Yes, the C8...

Hi All,

Sharing some more Mars images, quite possibly the last images of Mars that I'll be spending time on capturing this season, but the last image, 14th November has something strange on it.. two streaks which look like smoke plume, volcanic like, smoke plumes being blown in a direction away from the eruption.... Is it possible that Mars is still active?

1 hour ago, spacedog said:

 

Hi all yes i do not understand my camera fo sure,my previous hobby was making tall ships out of wood but als it turned into a to expensive hobby.i have a interest in the  sky for a long time and decided to have a go,i bought mt Skywatcher 150 of harrison telescopes and the  camers 40D second handfrom a online camera shop.All my photos previosly have been with a compact point and shoot,this is a new ballpark for and a bit confusing lol.I am sure i will get there in the end .just need some decent weather

You have to take your time, take baby steps and eventually, sooner rather than later, you will definitely be capturing images that you're amazed by today... but don't give up and know that this is a steep learning curve to climb and it will not be a quick progress... come to think about it, we all keep learning and improving without end, until we die or stop imaging.

1 hour ago, Matt61 said:

Is it possible ( I've read online) that live view only works in one of the creative modes and not full manual.

Live View works in all modes....

Depending on how much you want to spend, the Televue Nagler 5mm would most likley be the best choice as my Televue optics are excellent, but if you want a cheaper option than the Celestron X-Cel 5mm has given me some of the best and sharpest views of Jupiter and Saturn during those nights of exceptional seeing in my 8" SCT... but the seeing had to be perfect otherwise it was not a performer... mind you I am talking a magnification of 406X.

My next recommendation is a LV... the 7mm LV I own is also excellent.

I can relate to your frustrations, I remember when I had a failed session after failed session and wanted to throw in the towel... but what I done was step back and took some time away... 

But this challenge was always on my mind and I kept returning to the subject by reading as much info as I could and coming up with a plan of attack... I was unable to give in... I hate being beaten...

I setup my gear after a few month away and this time there were times when I left it setup in my backyard for many days at a time, just throwing a tarp over it when I was at work having it assembled and ready to continue solving my problems during the next night. This took the setup time out of the equation (which is a lot of time out of a whole session), and in time I had small successes... and kept improving on them.

Today I have more successful imaging sessions than failures... touch wood... and I did build a permanently setup hut for my gear since than.

I too have small children and understand the time restriction placed on us while they're small, but the secret is to avoid setting up every time you want to image, you're wasting time and potentially running around in circles not solving anything except repeating the same thing over and over again.

Didn't Einstein say that a definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome? So I say that your frustration is due to this hobby having the capability to consume and drive us insane...

Like stated above, image with both and compare them... personally and in my experience, I wouldn't choose a higher res DSLR but the one with bigger pixels on the sensor... in this case would be the 30D... bigger surface area to capture more photons... stacking will negate noise...

I compared a 40D to a 7D, i.e. 10 mpix vs 18mp and the 40D out performed the 7D for sensitivity and noise was about the same...

22 hours ago, spacedog said:

Not sure what that part is i now find camera only works on auto,trying to focus on M and live view does not work now that bit has fell out of camera.

 

Thats only the focus assist filter, easy to put back in place, and the DSLR operation should not change without it installed.

22 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Please don’t discount the 40d. I regularly used mine and @MarsG76 uses one.

Its more than adequate.

Hopefully that’s just a little focusing screen and has no bearing on functionality of the camera. 

I agree, don't underestimate the (full spectrum modded) 40D just because it's a DSLR and because it's "old" tech... this DSLR has delivered some great images at various focal lengths, and is no where near as noisy as what has been stated, and when I cooled it, the noise almost all disappeared, in even 20 & 30 minutes subs.

The 40D is a APS-C sized sensor equipped camera which is only 10 megapix, meaning that the physical pixels on the chip are bigger than in newer cameras which are double or even quadruple the resolution, and a bigger surface area is bound to get hit by more photos.

I actually compared my unmodded 40D to my unmodded 7D DSLRs capturing a galaxy a couple of years ago, comparing with the same ISO and same exposure time and the 40D subs were noticeably brighter, with more of the fainter galaxy features in the subs.... and the 7D is only 8 megapixels more in resolution, with not smaller sensor pixels surface area than on the 40D.  

On 26/05/2019 at 19:40, Ben Loyola said:

After setting up the Macro using the desired wavelet settings go to add files.  It won't show image files only video type files.  To overcome that just go to the folder with your tifs and enter *.* in the file name and you will see your tif images.  Highlight all of the tifs and click OPEN.  Now the batch will run against all of your images.  Make sure you select a different file format for the wavelet save otherwise it will overwrite the original tifs.

Ben Loyola

 

THANK YOU.. IT WORKS.... this has saved me a lot of time doing this tedious job manually.... 

Hello All,

I'm going through some of my subs which I captured earlier this year, but did not have a chance to process. This is my "War and Peace" nebula RGB subs processed which I captured on 22 June 2020, after the nights of imaging this nebula in Narrowband.

Imaged at f6.3, 1280mm focal length, through my 8" SCT, cooled and modded Canon 40D for about 4 hours exposure time.

CS,

MG

I use a flip mirror... when I added this, it made a world of difference....

Hello all,

Sharing my latest image of Mars, taken with a Skyris 618C CCD through my C8 8" SCT at f33.

The size of Mars is already noticeably smaller than it was only a couple of weeks ago.

CS

MG

Nice sketches.... A good record from a time when Mars wont be this close to us for a very long time.

58 minutes ago, Swoop1 said:

sharp enough to draw blood

Perhaps why Mars is so red 😉

Hello all,

It's been a while since I posted any images on SGL, as I was collecting some Mars images during the opposition 2020 season.

I'm sharing with you my better quality collection of Mars images which I have imaged during September and October 2020.
For some reason I had many more nights where the seeing was so bad that my data was very blurry than nights where the detail was crips and I, either,  threw out more images or gave up on imaging nights than ending up with a half decent image.

These images were taken with my Celestron 8" SCT using a Skyris 618C CCD at f33 (6700mm focal length) all riding on the CGEM and captured in Firecapture.

All images are De-Rotated stacks in WinJupos of the best 10% of frames from 10-20 90 second videos captured at 60 fps... number of videos I used was depended on the clarity of the atmosphere and image capture quality on the night.

The date and time written in the caption is in UTC and the median time when de-rotated.

Clear Skies,

MG

+1 for over exposure notification...

I LOVE THIS.... this is one of (if not the) best collection of Mars I have seen.... I'm collecting Mars images through my 8" SCT, and even though I'm quite happy with my results, the resolution is nowhere near what you managed with that C14 monster.

Both are great for viewing nebulae, but personally (if I'd only be getting one filter) than I'd be getting the UHC filter.

I own the 2" Astronomic and a 1.25" Lumicon UHC as well as both the 1.25" & 2" Celestron OIII filters and the UHC filters are used much more than the OIII, simply because I get much nicer views of nebulae through it than when comparing the view through the OIII filter.

Yup.. amazing how much difference a dark sky makes to imaging and observing DSO.